Yutori:

"[A] state of psychological well-being and positive perspective."

A long look on a quiet walk.

Followed by this.

The thing about gray winter days

is that every now then -- actually occasionally, only now that I think about it, truly rarely -- a sunny day or a sunny afternoon or even just a sunny hour pops up, reminding me why I feel imprisoned.

This was yesterday.

Today was gray.

Who says windows must be cleaned?

Not me.

Bitter

cold -- of the kind that turns my fingers red, numb, white (though gloved and stuffed into wool-lined pockets) and fingernails purple, the kind that makes me fumble when I try to press any button on my camera and dries my eyes straining to see anything clearly, even my own shadow, reddens my nose and cheeks, whips up my jeans and down my socks -- may slow me down, but doesn't stop me from a brisk walk and a look, especially a slightly cheering one on seeing more water in Lake Cheston but still depressing given the appearance of segmented hardened earth -- like quilt patches -- of once-mud-then-packed-dry-blocks under that water; then the pronounced shadows, the long shadows that slash the reddened grasses standing up to the teens and the icy winds, teaching me to surrender to weather and still walk, still see, then recover with tea and warm water and cats, always doing the smart thing: hunkering in their round beds.

Always Check the Rearview

I noticed the glass bricks from far below, in Abbo's Alley, and I decided to investigate. I should have done it years ago.

Not being a paying member of the Fowler Center with athletic privileges, I usually just walk or drive by the place without notice or thought (except for the pedestrians). Ignorance in this case is definitely not bliss.

Glass bricks.

Shadows.

Even a late-blooming weed.

What's not to love?

Where Shadows Rest

Naomi Shihab Nye encourages Ernest Mann to see poems in "shadows / drifting across our ceilings the moment / before we wake up."

Today, poems rest in shadows just beyond computer glare.

But oh how I long to wake from winter fog into light more brilliant out than in.

A Day of Long Shadows

The most beautiful thing I saw today: shadows. Wherever I walked, wherever I looked, sun announced itself.

The most beautiful thing I heard today: a concert at the College that ended with Rhapsody in Blue. That piece, like the sun, casts its own shadow. For the first third of my life, I made music, and piano was my first and longest-played instrument. The last work I learned was Rhapsody in Blue, a demanding, difficult, joyful piece. I still remember my inability to get the count right in one passage, above which my teacher wrote, "huck-le-berry-huck-le-berry."

The young man who played tonight smiled at the conductor and at the music, letting himself show his pleasure in the music. For the duration of the piece, I felt Gershwin's heat like a sun, warm on my back, so much so that by the time I got home, I wondered where that person who made music went.

I am not she now. I am only the shadow of that musician.

Noon in the Village

Business closed. 

Building empty. 

One table; one chair.

Shadows the only occupants. 




Edward Hopper nostalgia.